Oath of Nissa and Akoum Firebird are both good ideas, and they definitely fall within the range of this deck. Akoum is really bad against aggro - and not great in the midrange mirror - but it's nasty against control, because most control decks don't play any ways to exile something if you aren't casting it. Just recurring Akoum every turn with landfall isn't a terrible gameplan. And you're right that if we're mostly using Grapple as a Cantrip, Oath is much better in the early game (though still worse in the late game). Our lack of 1-mana plays does lead to trouble casting two spells in a turn...

Greenwarden was in the deck before, but he just doesn't line up right for the meta. Most of the games that are going long enough that he'd be powerful are the same games your opponent is casting counterspells or Ulamog. Either way, he won't be winning you those games.

Where Akoum is the card I'm least sure about. But I have been looking for a breaker against Esper Control, and it does fit the bill - they're basically digging to 2x Anguished Unmaking or Archangel Avacyn.

These changes significantly increase the early game power level, at the cost of some lategame flexibility. It also lets Oath of Nissa hit 52/59 cards in the deck, which is real close to a 1-mana Anticipate with upside. I'd need to test more to see what I think of the tradeoff.

Update

Ran a couple games - Akoum Firebird feels bad. It's not a good blocker, and +3 haste damage is less than any of our other haste payoffs offer the turn we're trying to kill. Evasion isn't enough upside. Voltaic Brawler felt great, though - and having more early game interaction was nice. I didn't miss grapple as much as I thought I might, though I did miss Thopter Engineer a few times. The lack of ability to hold up both Harnessed Lightning and Grapple with the Past at the same time was the most noticeable cost, and I don't think that's worth the extra mana. Also, Pia Nalaar is a house, and we definitely want both copies.

Additionally, swapping Westvale Abbey for the second Foundry of the Consuls; we're big enough on artifact synergies that it's definitely worth more. Untapping into Pia getting to nullify two blockers off your lands is just mean.

30 lands is way too many. Most Ramp decks want somewhere between 23 and 25 lands, depending on how many lands they can fetch from the deck. Definitely cut the non-basics except for Evolving Wilds as well as maybe the 1-of Rogue's Passage. (The fixing will be done with ramp spells). Personally, I'm not too fond of Zendikar Incarnate either, but it's not completely terrible.I'd definitely include 3-4 Explosive Vegetation; especially when running as many landfall payoffs as you do. Woodland Bellower is a very nice payoff as he can find your Advocates and Trackers (as well as maybe a 1- or 2-of Reclamation Sage). If you have her, Chandra, Flamecaller is also amazing doubling down as pretty much anything you need. Some other decent payoffs would be Combustible Gearhulk or Ulvenwald Hydra, which can find your Passage.

Meta is fast. Sweepers don't answer vehicles. Control is risky and too often kills itself due to mana and consistency issues. I wanted to make a deck that is both consistent, fast and also durable in a longer stretch.

I evaluated a few options - Bant tempo, RW vehicles, UR burn etc.

Bant, being 3 colors, can often have mana issues. It is decent against mid speed decks but fails against creatureless control or full speed aggro if no reflector mage T3.

RW vehicles, is fast and ok with consistency. It runs out of gas when a sweeper is cast, or vehicles get removed. When nut draw happens, Toolcraft into Copter or Scrounger is almost unstoppable. However, in case UR burn gets something like a lightning axe, harnessed lightning, Fiery Temper and a bunch of Bombardments the deck is almost dead.

UR burn, very good against both full speed aggro as well as creatureless aggro. The draw spells are superb with take inventory and glimmer. The deck has a few weaknesses - Scrounger, Bristling Hydra, Woodland Wanderer, Green hulk, and resolved planeswalkers. They don't show up very often but when they show up, UR burn is dead.

Finally I picked this RG energy deck I liked so much from the beginning of the season. The deck has bigger threats on curve than RW aggro (Brawler vs Motorist, Hellion vs Thalia etc) so 1. beatdown can happen faster vs control 2. vs aggro it can transform into a defensive midrange deck and grind them out. It can include most of those things that UR burn hates to see Scrounger Hydra Hulk and walkers. It has more gas / mana sinks thanks to tracker and recruiter. The energy synergy makes it more consistently taking advantage of harnessed lightning removal, Aether Hub for the scrounger splash and bunch of others hellion, hydra etc. The vehicles package copter cruiser skyship are nightmares to tapped out control and walkers.

So, as you see, the deck is so all-around in tourney that has almost nothing to fear. From the experience, the MVP cards are

Brawler - The energy source, the beater, the winner. Hellion - When I draw them I never lose. No better beater than these. Similar to Brawlers, can attack into the toughest defensive creatures Thing in the Ice / Thermo Alchemist / Sylvan Advocate.Harnessed Lightning - Removal for pretty much anything with energy support. (Round 2 against Batman's Elder Deep-Fiend + Round 4 against Giocher's Torrential Gearhulk were both game winning plays.)Hydra - Many decks simply don't have answer to it. Pia - The abilities are very versatile and aggressive. Pia to some extent represents the whole deck's idea. It is balanced. It can go aggressive by going wide (thopter token), going tall (+1/+0), unblockable, mana sink in late game (+1/+0), board stabilizing if needed. It's one card people don't realize how good it is until they play with it - exactly like this entire deck.

one swamp is for scrounger activation. with help from the 4 evolving wilds, we can get 1+4+3 = 8 black sources in total. Once we've got double G and double R, evo wilds can fetch the swamp. We've got 17R and 18G sources. Don't really need a RG tap land. If you swap out the swamp, an untapped mountain would be my preference so you get 18R 18G

Scrounger activation is not that irrelevant, actually. However, I can see why you shy away from Swamp; you want to be able to keep some 2-landers but you can almost never keep 2 lands if one of them is a swamp.If you want to go a middle-ground route, I'd consider Smoldering Marsh; still gives you Red and has a good chance to enter untapped (especially with Evolving Wilds). Gives you 5 sources, which might be enough. Think I'd definitely like it better than the GR tapland.

My experience with colorless in this deck - I used to play 2x reality smasher with 2 hanweir battlements + 1 wastes. Mana was not very reliable. Joly suggested me putting a couple utility lands but I still prefer the slighty more consistency.

Since I've just joined the Steam party I don't yet have all the cards on this account. I managed to grind out the SOI set with the starter box from which I was able to build this RG Werewolf deck from. I built other decks but they didn't live up to my expectations. I hit rank 40 lastnight with this on steam so it must be good! ***Built only from Starter Box & SOI***

Since I've just joined the Steam party I don't yet have all the cards on this account. I managed to grind out the SOI set with the starter box from which I was able to build this RG Werewolf deck from. I built other decks but they didn't live up to my expectations. I hit rank 40 lastnight with this on steam so it must be good! ***Built only from Starter Box & SOI***

High five! I also just switched over from Xbox a couple weeks ago. I can never find opponents anymore on Xbox. Steam I find an opponent every time in less than 20 secs. It sucks starting over. I built Socur's deck with budget replacements and made it all the way to 40 upgrading with actual pieces as I went. Finally just got the deck 100% yesterday.

Played this deck and stayed on rank 40 for a while, it quite easy to use and very efficient.Only problem is, it's very weak against heavy control decks with a lot of counter/kill/wrath etc. But it still have chance, do as much damage as you can before being wiped and use Exquisite Firecraft to finish the game.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum